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Thursday, 3 March 2016

Most fans will put the turning point a fair bit
later, but in my opinion Season 5 was the beginning of the end for The Simpsons. Decades later, of course it had far further to fall, but in my
opinion, this was where things started to get lazy, repetitive and far less
adventurous. The characters are by now very well-established, with only the
likes of one-note Cletus and the mute monobrow baby introduced into the cast at
this stage.

The series begins strongly, but that seems to me
largely because of holdovers and creative continuances from Season 4. ‘CapeFeare’ in particular is a
favourite episode, and while it begins the annoying trend of ‘Don’t you
remember this time that ought to have made Homer incredibly famous?’, there are
great moments in ‘Homer’s Barbershop Quartet.’ ‘Rosebud’ also reminds the
viewer that by this stage, Mr. Burns is actually one of the most developed of
the show’s characters, ‘Homer and Apu’ fleshes out a character who could so
easily have been an embarrassment for the writers and this is in fact probably
a golden era for Bart, what with insisting on an elephant, getting briefly
famous, becoming a billionaire’s heir and getting Skinner fired and having a
dilemma over testifying in court or keeping his truancy secret.

Some set-ups seem repetitive. There’s been enough
wooing of Marge and her sisters, so it’s time for her mother to get an episode.
Homer’s gossiping estranges Marge yet again in a rushed and very superficial
season finale – oh, and is also tempted by another woman once again, only to
remember that his marriage is much more important.

I’m not saying this isn’t a strong season. It has a
lot of classic episodes and was a show really hitting its stride. But for me,
the signs of the well-known later decline are in place. This is also the stage
where it feels extremely hard to continue to look at The Simpsons as the
average American dysfunctional family, which was after all the show’s hook –
honest pessimism with a heart of gold underneath it, as opposed to
idealisation. They are in many ways average, sure, but at this stage, both
father and son have been household names, even if only briefly, Lisa has
released a toy line and Homer has gone to space. Yes, at every stage the idea
is that it’s the loveable everyday family getting into these strange
situations, but at a certain point, they’re just no longer going to be credible
as loveable and everyday.

There’s still a long way to go before The
Simpsons stops being fun to watch, and there are plenty of great episodes
still to come. But the show has lost its fresh feeling. Luckily, by this stage
it is very well-established as a true classic and an American institution. But
in some ways I wish they’d taken the FawltyTowersroute rather than pushing it
until inevitably the shark is jumped.

Welcome to Adziu's small corner

Welcome to my little blog, here in this small corner.
Over the years I have seen a few hundred animated series and movies, and the purpose of this blog is to house my impressions. This is not intended to be a daily blog with impressions of each episode: I write my thoughts only after viewing something complete. Several have been imported from previous blogs dating back to 2005 - as well as drawing from journals from as early as 1999!
Now, please do sit, enjoy the fire, have a mug of something warm and put in a comment or two.